Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Child Exploitation Deepfakes topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Subcommittee advances bill to criminalize morphed images of identifiable children, change registry rules
Summary
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee advanced S.29, which would add morphed images of identifiable children to exploitation-of-a-minor offenses, create misdemeanor treatment for minors, and change when offenders can be removed from the sex-offender registry.
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee in South Carolina on an unstated date advanced S.29, a bill that would add morphed images of identifiable children to the state's first-, second- and third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor statutes and adjust related sex-offender registry rules.
The bill, described to the panel by staff member Mara, would treat offenses that involve a morphed image of an identifiable child differently from other exploitation offenses: minors charged for morphed-image offenses would be charged with a misdemeanor for a first offense and their cases would be heard in family court, where the court could order behavioral counseling. Mara told the committee the measure would "add exceptions for government agents who possess these images in their official capacity, including making the images available to defense counsel in response to discovery request." Mara also said the bill mirrors language from a senate measure that passed last year and includes registry-removal language allowing tier 1 and tier 2 offenders to petition for removal after 15 and 25 years respectively from the termination of sentence or supervision.
Witness Chase Mizelle, who identified himself as both an academic researching AI and technology ethics and a family member of victims, urged passage. "The visits to deep fake websites online have more than tripled in the last few years," Mizelle told the subcommittee, and "the best available evidence is that 96% of deep fakes online are pornographic." He described a personal case in which innocuous social-media photos were morphed with explicit material and said law enforcement and federal resources were unable to resolve the matter under current state law.
Mizelle said he helped draft the bill with the Children's Law Center and the attorney general's office and told senators he believes the bill "adequately addresses the problem." He offered a 25-page research brief to members.
The subcommittee considered and approved a technical amendment that corrects punctuation and a statutory term: it removes the word "criminal" from the phrase "criminal exploitation of a minor" to match existing statute language. The panel moved the bill and voted in favor; no opposition was recorded in the subcommittee vote.
The motion on S.29 was adopted in subcommittee with a voice vote of ayes and no recorded opposed members. The bill will proceed according to legislative scheduling.
Supporters emphasized that the bill targets rapidly proliferating deepfake technology and creates juvenile-specific treatment and family-court procedures. The technical amendment and the exception for government agents were presented as clarifying edits to align the bill with existing provisions and with a senate measure passed last year.
A fuller record of amendments and the subcommittee roll call will appear in the committee minutes.
